Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.

Parque Nacional Torres del
Paine in Chile is the finest National Park in South America, at least
some of our guide books say. It is certainly very popular with overland groups
and expensive by Chilean standards. Currently it is also wet and
windy.

This web page comes
to you from a very wet car park, just inside the park, opposite Villa
Serrano. If it wasn't raining, cold and misty, it would be a fine place
to spend the night (S51.228243 W72.974880). Nearby is an official campsite
which offers nothing of value for $12USA per van per night. What it offers
people with tents is somewhere under cover to pitch their tent
out of the wind!

Today we also visited the main campsite at Camping Lago
Pehoe ($17USA per van per night). In this campsite there were two Exodus
Overland trucks, one Budget-Travel truck, one Toucan-Travel truck and one
large, black, UK-registered truck with no company name. We have also seen a
Rotel (Rolling Motel) truck in the park.

We also visited Hosteria Lago Grey where you could
eat a set lunch ($31USA per person) if they could be bothered to serve you. You
could also take a three hour boat trip from the hotel to the Glaciar
Grey for $50USA. We ate in the vans and admired the glacier thru the
rain and mist (no charge).

Given reasonable weather, the scenery in the park is magnificent
and well worth the $20USA per person entry fee. However it is certainly best to
bring your own food and wild camp. There is no shortage of places to wild camp
and there are no signs that it is disapproved of (at least in a campervan). So
far we have seen numerous guanacos, a few silver foxes and families of geese.
We are hoping, but not expecting, to see a puma during our stay in the
area.

On our first night in
the park we wild-camped at a great spot just beyond the car park for
Salto Grande (above) at S51.068253 W73.000330.

Whilst the parking spot was idyllic, the wind was not. By late
evening the wind speed had risen to around 50kph and both Mel and Mog had to be
repositioned to reduce the amount of rocking. In spite of this, Mo was actually
"seasick" whilst parked in Mel on dry land!

Stephen
Stewart.

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changed on 2007-01-23This page contains the latitude and longitude (from
GPS using WGS84 Datum) of places of interest.